Sunday, May 09, 2010

Unfairness In The Electoral System

The Major hopes he isn't paying for this crew

With the electoral chips up in the air, the BBC/Grun line is that the current arrangements for electing our government are grossly unfair. They reckon the electors are overwhelmingly anti-Tory, but are denied their voice by the grotesque anti-democratic distortion of first-past-the-post.

Which is one view. But round our way, the anti-democratic distortion getting most airtime is the one that has endless socialist governments foisted on us by state dependencies hundreds of miles away.

We've blogged these issues many times, but let's just consider the current election result in the Greater South East (GSE - everything inside an arc from the Wash to the Solent).

There, the Tories were clear winners, with 44% of the vote, against just 24% each for Labour and Lib Dems. And the Tories took 155 of the GSE's 214 seats.

Yet despite that, the GSE's voters are having to swallow the prospect of a coalition government with the Lib Dems. They watched helplessly as their Tory votes got swamped by socialist votes from Scotland and other dependencies. Just like happened last time. And the time before that.

Which is really rather upsetting.

Because as everyone surely knows by now, it's the GSE's taxpayers who have to pay for all the state largesse doled out to those faraway dependencies.

We haven't got time right now to crunch the very latest numbers, but in 2006-07, Oxford Economics estimated that the GSE contributed nearly £40bn to the rest of the country (ie tax payments less public spending received by the GSE). Or getting on for £2000 per capita.

Here's their picture (the GSE comprises Eastern, Greater London, and South East regions, and note that in this analysis all North Sea taxes have been attributed to Scotland):

Bottom line?

If we're going to open the issue of electoral reform, we need a proper look at the entire shooting match. As well as PR, we need to look at the structure of government. A separately elected English Parliament is clearly on the agenda, but we also need to return fiscal power to local communities.

The people round our way are sick of getting outvoted by the beneficiaries of socialist fantasies elsewhere in the country. It just ain't fair.

PS Why hasn't Tyler left the country yet? Well, because he reckons there will be another election in 6 months or so, hopefully delivering the real result.

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Drawing on six years of blogging government waste, this book shows how we spend far more than we need on our public services. It sets out the facts and explores the underlying issues. Just why does government spend so much and deliver such second rate service? Why do we put up with it? And what are the alternatives?

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Despite all the talk of cuts, government still consumes nearly half our national income. Yet many tens of billions of its spending is wasted, with taxpayers made to pick up the tab for a depressing array of overpriced sub-standard services. This is money we can no longer afford, and our National Debt is already at danger level.

If we're to avoid further decades of stagnation and austerity we urgently need to find another way. Exposing and understanding the wastefulness of government is a necessary step in the right direction.